Within the field of aeronautical communications, a radio bubble is defined by the set of platforms within radio reach from each other. When a mission implies a plurality of platforms or the crossing of mountainous areas involving geographical masking operations, several radio bubbles co-exist. A helicopter in a tactical flight at the bottom of a valley generally forms a radio bubble isolated from a certain number of platforms of the patrol which is related to the presence of mountains around the helicopter.
A radio relay between these platforms is then applied in order to increase the range of the exchanges between platforms or dealing with geographical masking operations. When a radio relay is set up, this means that a designated platform aims at re-emitting received data with the goal that two platforms which are not within radio reach of each other may communicate together.
However, the presence of such a radio relay poses problems within the scope of unicast and multicast data communications in the form of IP packets or Ethernet frames. The term of unicast defines a point-to-point network connection, i.e. from an emitter to a (single) receiver while the term of multicast (which is expressed by the expression multi-broadcasting ) is a form of broadcasting from an emitter (single source) to a group of receivers. The terms of «multi-point broadcasting» or «group broadcasting» are also used.
In a unicast mode, multiple reception of data is observed when an aircraft intermittently belongs to a radio bubble for which a relay is applied (the aircraft is not assumed to be within reach of the other aircraft of this radio bubble). In a multicast mode, multiple receptions of data occur when one or several aircraft are both within radio reach of the aircraft emitting the multicast data flow and of a relay station. Multiple reception of data is all the more a problem since it involves specific processing at the application level (in order to suppress the receipt of data several times) while the world of applications is, by nature, agnostic about broadcasting mechanisms and delivery mechanisms of underlying data.
Therefore there exists a need for a method for communicating data between a plurality of aircraft involving less application resources for its application.